What: Rover allows advertisement of your animal care services, from dog-walking to pet and house-sitting
Expected pay: You set the rate
Commission: 20% to 25% of your fee
Where: National
Requirements: Be 18 or older, good with animals, own a smartphone; other requirements depend on work
Review:
Rover, purchased competitor DogVacay in early 2017, allows you to post your profile free of charge.
How It Works:
Register for free and set up your profile stating who you are; the services you offer (i.e. overnight boarding, dog walking, pet daycare services), and your rate. You are able to set different fees for each of the different services.
Rates listed on the site range from $20 to $50 – depending on the service. We heard from a dog walker that said even when she was unavailable, people continued to contact her for bookings. Dog sitters that have been interviewed say they make more than $1,000/month.
Although registering on the site is free, the site takes a 20-25% cut from your earnings for each booking. The higher percentage are those who opt into “RoverGo.” RoverGo gets you a higher placement in the site’s listings.
If dog-walking vs dog sitting or boarding is your main focus, you may also want to sign up with Wag, but Wag takes 40% of your earnings.
What Pet-sitters Say: (From Indeed)
“Rover dot com is a great place to work. You set your own hours and your pay. The flexibility is nice and clients are usually pretty friendly. The only downside I feel is you have to “sell yourself to clients” so that they will choose you over another Rover sitter.”
“I worked with Rover and a competitor back to back for a couple of years during and after high school. It was nice for some spending money every once in a while, but nowhere near decent pay. I repeatedly got scammed out of money by customers, and had my account terminated for reasons unknown. Their online customer service is good if you’re a paying customer, but pretty. awful if you’re employed by them. Overall, not worth it for anyone with the ability to have a full time job.”
“Rover is a completely independent job reference. It is up to the individual to grow their clientele. I have worked with Rover for over 3 years. I have wonderful clients and awesome puppies. You do need to screen the dog owners, because occasionally you will meet one that can be unreasonable. I have been very lucky with both the owners and the dogs.I have wonderful people I work with everyday. Dog owners are special people. This is a meet and greet type job. You must like people and dogs. (or cats).”
“Easy to vet, easy to customer, easy to navigate, all done by phone app just need a good client relationship and a car and flexable schedule. The only down side is that they can review you but you cant review customers.”
